Engineering News

What if they work the night shift?

An old idea dressed up for sale.

Folk can reuse PET bottles for this and it won't cost them anything. I figure if somebody is relying on the sun to UV sterilise their drinking water they won't have resources to buy a plastic purse. And those who night have the money would have no need for UV sterilised water.

Try again guys.

Ever tried to carry (7) 2 liter bottles? Are you suggesting that if a person can come up with $5, they have clean water?

It is a concept, it is not for sale. They are looking at ways to help people live longer with clean water. I am humbled by these people. What are you doing, Wal?

Having a moan mostly, thanks for asking.

This purse has a volume of 2.5 gallons(US?) or 9.5 litres.

So you wouldn't be humping around 7x2 litres it would be 5x2 litre bottles to be a closer comparison.

Either way you're humping water. No advantage.

The purse doesn't sterilise the water while you're walking, it has to be laid out in the sun to work. The bottles would also need to be laid out in the sun so no gain here.

If the bladder on the purse ruptures then you are stuffed. If you break one bottle (some how) you still have 4 more. That's not too good for the purse, no containment redundancy. Bottles are ahead.

With 5 bottles you can also share the carrying load if a party of people are dependent on this. The purse burdens one person. What a drag.

Distributed storage offered by bottles also permits the stash to be divided if the party needs to separate. Bag envy could get ugly.

I'm guessing water bottles would be easier to fill, faster too if more than one at a time could be filled.

You can even do batch sterilisation with bottles, allowing folk to fill up opportunistically without recontaminating sterile stock in a sole container.

The only advantage the purse has is the form factor. Very convenient. Very elegant.

The water bottle solution is also totally scalable.

I will concede that the purse is a very clever design. Too bad it has little practical merit or advantage over simpler, cheaper, accessible and existing functionally identical solutions.

Bling for the thirsty.

those are 1/2 liter bottles in your clever and funny pic. Those danged impoverished are a riot. I guess it would fill 19 of those.

Easier to fill? If you fill your car gas tank with one gallon cans, it seems tough to make the case that is easier. But you may do that, as I'm not quite sure of your rationale.

Next time you go to a friends house, have each of your friends bring in one of your beers from the six pack. They probably don't need anything to drink. Splitting the load is smart.

How would you scale a 2.5 gallon water bag? Man, that's a tough one. Get two? Fill it halfway? mind boggling.

Easier to fill?

Sure, you can dip bottles into a trough or a pond to fill them.

Compartmentalised bladder would deal with some drawbacks but then you may as well just have bottles strapped in.

The world would be better off if we spent more time helping Third World people with appropriate technology. I like the bottles better, but hauling them in a black cart would be a good idea. Maybe a PVC pipe with a small pump to take water where it is needed? Anyone working on improving the lives of the suffering is doing God's work.